I don’t like the star playing his wife. Let me just come out and day it: She’s a shrike, a bitch, and if I had her for a wife I’d want to travel back in time too! And as for the actress herself, she looks more like a supermodel than someone who’d risk her figure to have a kid. This is bad casting.

I don’t see the appeal of the woman he pines for. All that time he thought she was dead — and she’s not? Did I care? No.

His journeying back in time made no spatial sense. He’d go to sleep in his bed and somehow wind up miles away in a park? Are they going to use earth rotation as an excuse? For that matter, what triggers the time traveling? There’s an inference of either the Hand of God or mental illness being the catalyst. The latter is more convincing than the former.

Is every episode going to involve him intervening in some aspect of the past, in someone else’s life? This reeks of Early Edition. That show had more appealing, more true-to-life, characters — plus a cat!

His initial journey back into the past lacks emotional realism. To understand what I mean, I now have to recount my own “journeyman” episode. It was a dream I had back in 2003 (1/26 to be precise; it’s in my Palm) and it left a permanent mark on me.

I “woke up” standing on the sidewalk looking at a protest marching north near Columbus Circle. It is sometime in the 1970s (I can’t pinpoint the year). I am seeing a protest I had actually witnessed in real life back then. But I am back there with my knowledge of today. And it hits me that I am back there with what I know now. I have traveled back in time. The vividness of the dream, its reality, is as real as real, if not realer (you know how hyper-real dreams can be; if you don’t, I feel sorry for you!). I am there.And I know the future. And all the shit that I’d been through in that future is now gone. Wiped away. I had a sense of freedom, of liberation, that I’d never before experienced in my life. I could do everything differently — and with the foreknowledge I contained inside me. I walked down to a neighborhood I once lived in for a few years. It was pre-gentrified. The rents were still low and I could see the lowlifes who had been swept out in the neighborhood’s redevelopment. They didn’t frighten me. In fact, I was without fear altogether. That I was suddenly homeless and apparently penniless didn’t bother me at all. It was the freedom of it all that excited me. I could get money, I could get an apartment — and beyond all that, I could get rich. I knew the tech stocks to invest in. I knew that Microsoft was still a private company. There was no DOS yet. No IBM PC. Reagan wasn’t yet in office (and when he came in, I’d know there’d never be a nuclear war with the Soviets — something many people actually feared during that time!). Do you understand? Can you imagine it for yourself? How absolutely exciting! To this day — over four years later! — all I have to do is recall that dream and I can recapture some of the emotion of it.

Journeyman lacked that. Instead of seeing his life having a new, fresh start, instead of feeling the emotions that would accompany that — we get nothing. A search for shoes in his old (not-his-yet) house. And even then it almost takes a baseball bat to the head for him to realize what has happened. Even if he thought it was a vivid dream, there are things he could have done other than what the writer chose.

This is bad writing. Very, very bad writing. Characterization was pushed aside in favor of plot. A possibly fatal mistake. With the rare opportunity to grab the audience and make them experience such a trip, to really feel it, the writer flubbed it.

In this respect, I think many people who’ve read The Time Traveler’s Wife and watch the show for the first time tonight will feel right at home. It’s as arid and as shallow as that book. It even has an element from that book: the character time-traveling while driving, causing an accident! Strange coincidence, huh?

Well, that’s a bit different than what I’ve seen listed on two sites offering pre-orders. They’ve had the 701 as the top-end model for $399. This has that model now being $100 cheaper. If it will be made available in the U.S.!

I’d still go for the top-end model. I don’t want to muck about trying to squeeze in more Flash — even if it’s possible (which it might not be).

I have to admit it. I miss my blog. It wasn’t a mistake to end it. Even dead, it’s gotten over 395,000 views as of the last day of 2007! But I miss having a blog. Wait. What? Yes! That’s it! I’ll do a new blog!

Update: As of August 16 2008, when I happened to peek in here, the fake Rolling Stone magazine cover I’d created was shown to be expired. Expired?!!? WTF is that?! How absolutely stupid is that!? FAIL! I should have done a screensnap. If I knew this was going to happen, I would have — and […]

I never thought I would write this. And it has to appear here. Because it’s about Girls Don’t Cry. They no longer exist. They’ve disbanded. They’ve quit. Girls Don’t Cry as they were on June 21, 2007: Sora An, Rachael Cornick, Hannah Fairlight, Liz Kelly, Caitlin Gray Don’t Quit! Charles Bukowski Having failed to hold […]

It was one year ago today I started this blog. Now this: This blog is now over. No more posts. No updates. Nothing. You got what you didn’t pay for, now you’re not getting it any longer. And that is that. I reserve the right to totally delete this blog at some point of my […]

September 2007 Contents From first post to last – September 2007 subhead: Ah, You want to know why I hate you today! — Charles Baudelaire August 2007 Contents A Post-iTunes Fable For NBC Quote Of The Day: Jobs Rulz, Gates Luz Ohhhhhhhkay Jff Zukr: Ur No Gneeiz No Jeff Zucker: He Don’t Do Emo Newsflash! […]

Hear, Hear Americans should not fear talking–and listening–to those whose views we loathe. [T]his has been our history: to let all speak and to fear no one. That’s a good history to continue. This is brilliant.